Kip Jones

KIP JONES, an American by birth, has been studying and working in the UK for more than 19 years. Under the umbrella term of 'arts-based research', his main efforts have involved developing tools from the arts and humanities for use by social scientists in research and its impact on a wider public or a Perfomative Social Science.

Jones is Reader in Performative Social Science and Director of the Centre for Qualitative Researchat Bournemouth University. Kip has produced films and written many articles for academic journals and authored chapters for books on topics such as masculinity, ageing and rurality, and older LGBT citizens. His ground-breaking use of qualitative methods, including biography and auto-ethnography, and the use of tools from the arts in social science research and dissemination are well-known.

Jones acted as Author and Executive Producer of the award-winning short film, RUFUS STONE, funded by Research Councils UK. The film is now available for free viewing on the Internet and has been viewed by more than 13,000 people in 150 countries.

Areas of expertise• Close relationships, culture and ethnicity• Social psychology, sociology• Ageing, self and identity• Interpersonal processes, personality, individual differences, social networks, prejudice and stereotyping• Sexuality and sexual orientation• Creativity and the use of the arts in Social Science

Media experienceHis work has been reported widely in the media, including:BBC Radio 4,BBC TV news,Times Higher Education, Sunday New York Times, International Herald-Tribune and The Independent.

Alan Turing, mathematician who helped crack German codes during the second world war. Photograph: Public Domain

Gordon Brown issued an unequivocal apology last night on behalf of the government to Alan Turing, the second world war codebreaker who took his own life 55 years ago after being sentenced to chemical castration for being gay.

Describing Turing's treatment as "horrifying" and "utterly unfair", Brown said the country owed the brilliant mathematician a huge debt. He was proud, he said, to offer an official apology. "We're sorry, you deserved so much better," Brown writes in a statement posted on the No 10 website.

Turing is most famous for his work in helping create the "bombe" that cracked messages enciphered with the German Enigma machines. He was convicted of gross indecency in 1952 after admitting a sexual relationship with a man.

He was given experimental chemical castration as a "treatment". His criminal record meant he was unable to continue his work for the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) because his security privileges were withdrawn. Two years later he killed himself, aged 41.

Thousands have signed a Downing Street petition calling for an official apology, among them the novelist Ian McEwan, scientist Richard Dawkins, and gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell.

Paying tribute to Turing's contribution to "Britain's fight against the darkness of dictatorship", Brown described him as "a quite brilliant mathematician".

"Without his outstanding contribution, the history of world war two could well have been very different," he writes.

"The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of gross indecency – in effect, tried for being gay.

"His sentence – and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison – was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones."

The petition, which yesterday had 30,805 signatures, was the idea of computer scientist John Graham-Cumming, who has also written to the Queen to request Turing be awarded a posthumous knighthood. Although an official apology is unusual, the act is seen as symbolic. Alan Turing is survived by three neices – Inagh, Shuna and Janet, from his brother's first marriage – and a nephew, John Dermot Turing, from his brother's second marriage, along with their associated family members.

Acknowledging the strength of feeling, Brown wrote: "Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him.

"Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction.

"This recognition of Alan's status as one of Britain's most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long overdue."

"But even more than that, Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to humankind … It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe's history and not Europe's present.

"So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work I am very proud to say: we're sorry, you deserved so much better."

Though most famous for his codebreaking, Turing is often considered to be the father of modern computer science, having made highly significant contributions to the emerging field of artificial intelligence and computing. After the war he worked at many institutions, including the University of Manchester, where he worked on the Manchester mark 1, one of the first recognisable modern computers.

In 1999 Time Magazine named him as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century.

• This article was amended on Sunday 13 September 2009. We said that Alan Turing, the man often considered the father of modern computer science had no surviving family. In fact, his family includes three nieces, a nephew and his mother, and several children and spouses of this group. This has been corrected.

We are looking for a small group of people with some background in film, theatre or improvisation work or at least an interest in performance who are not shy about experimenting in front of each other!You don’t necessarily need to be a researcher or a performer; rather, we are more interested in a gathering of creative people with an interest in performance as a way of raising awareness.If you are fascinated by learning about improvisation and its potential as an interpretive tool for research, then this is a great opportunity to try something cutting edge in the research process.This is definitely a new way of thinking about the interpretation of research data through improvisation.

Monday, 7 September 2009

'This book presents the first comprehensive introduction to arts-based research (ABR) practices, which scholars in multiple disciplines are fruitfully using to reveal information and represent experiences that traditional methods cannot capture. Each of the six major ABR genres—narrative inquiry, poetry, music, performance, dance, and visual art—is covered in chapters that introduce key concepts and tools and present an exemplary research article by a leading ABR practitioner. Patricia Leavy discusses the kinds of research questions these innovative approaches can address and offers practical guidance for applying them in all phases of a research project, from design and data collection to analysis, interpretation, representation, and evaluation'.

'Kip Jones brings the genre of what he calls performative social sciences forward with wide-ranging theoretical, academic, and artistic products in a various media that takes up how social scientists can use art for investigation and dissemination.'

About Me

I am an expert in biographic narrative intperpretive method and performative social science.

My greatest strength is my ability to get people involved—even excited—about the possibilities of creative human interactions, knowledge-sharing and the potential of qualitative social science endeavours.

An American by birth, I have been studying and working in the UK for the past 15 years and travelling throughout Europe to learn and engage. Part of my work has involved developing tools from the arts and humanities for use by social scientists in dissemination of qualitative data.

Recognition

What they say at JISC:Kip’s blog, ‘KIPWORLD’, covers a wide range of topics from advice on writing a PhD thesis to insight into his creative process. He regularly uses his blog, Facebook and Twitter to share his research (with) others. Kip also contributes to the LSE Impact blog, LSE Review of Books, Discover Society, Sociological Imagination, Creative Quarter, The Creativity Post and the Bournemouth University Research Blog.

Creative Commons

Watch RUFUS STONE now!

Watch award-winning, research-based short biopic, RUFUS STONE live on the Internet.
“This film is as good as most Oscar-nominated shorts, and vastly superior to many. In my opinion, it is just about as good as a short film gets.” –Patricia Leavy, The Qualitative Report
Nominated for the AHRC Anniversary Prize for Research in Film, the Jury remarked:'Beautifully made, lyrical and moving and packs a complete narrative arc into its short span.'

5 Minutes with Kip Jones

Kip Jones at LSE Literary Fest

Kip Jones was a member of the panel at the LSE Review of Books hosted event as part of the 5th LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival, entitled, "Beyond the Book: new forms of academic communication". Kip spoke on “Performative Social Science: What it is and how it started” then joined the panel for a lively Q&A session. A podcast of the event is now available.